Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017

• Logo Arrested
• Rainless Station
• Vote Today
• Silent Musical
• Master Gardening
• Raid Target
• Rumor Mill
• Substance Abuse
• Housing Lack
• Burn Days
• Veterans Day
• Shooting JFK
• Glassey's Resignation
• Bartley's Anguish
• New Deputies
• Honor Students
• Fixer Upper
• Shindig Success
• Little Dog
• Care-a-Van Appearances
• Deregulated Utilities
• Yesterday's Catch
• Ellsberg Interview
• Halloween Tiz
• Obama Foretaste
• Owning Up
• Symphony Concerts
• Shipping Containers
• Twenty Years
• Economic Mysteries
• Homeless Explosion
• Insurance Workshop
• Netflix Scam
• Corrupt Supervisor
• Just Do It
• Paul Interview
• Planning Agenda
• Crow
• On Chaos
• Postmodernism
• Gump Answers

ANDERSON VALLEY woke Tuesday morning to learn that Logo Tevaseu has been arrested on suspicion of murder in the death of Paulette Quiba, a 21-year-old student at Sonoma State University. "Logo," as he is known throughout Northern California from his prowess as a high school then Division One football player, is suspected of driving drunk when he crossed into the oncoming lane on Lakeville Highway in Sonoma County and struck the vehicle driven by the young woman. The CHP said the accident occurred at 9:10pm Sunday night. Now 35, Logo works as an assistant football coach at Santa Rosa Junior College where he played football after graduating from Anderson Valley High School. He is married to the former Madeline Meyer, also of Anderson Valley. Logo has been charged with the more serious charge of murder because he was arrested for drunk driving in 2012.

pressdemocrat.com/news/7606510-181/chp-sonoma-state-university-student

INCONSISTENT FIGURES

Marshall Newman Writes: "Every Weather Underground station in Anderson Valley - even the Anderson Valley Station in Boonville – shows rainfall, from 0.02 to 0.06 inches – by 7:50 p.m. Sunday, yet the National Weather Service Station for Anderson Valley shows no rainfall. Navarro River flow has jumped in volume by nearly 10% over the course of the day, but you’d never know there had been any rain by the NWS rainfall measurement. Perhaps its station really is on vacation."

VOTE TUESDAY

SILENT MUSICAL. If you missed it last weekend, this rave reviewed production is on again for this weekend, Friday and Saturday night. A locally written and directed show. Live actors and silent musicians. A unique theatrical production staged at the Anderson Valley Solar Grange. This tale is a bow to the silent film era, and is told without dialogue. Mood and plot are carried by physical gestures coupled to music, with emphasis placed on vaudeville-style comedy. Conceived of and written by local resident and director Cob, and scored by Daniel McDonnell. The score will be performed live accompanying each performance. Tickets at the door or in advance through brownpapertickets.com.

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THE SILENT MUSICAL performed this past Friday and Saturday evening at the Philo Grange is simply wonderful. How in the world does one justifiably present a snapshot introduction to a work of art with such depth as The Silent Musical was so thought provoking and so brilliant that it is hard to come up even with an opening for this review. But here's the best I can do. Wow! Brilliant on many levels. Having known Cob aka Aaron Martin for a few years I have been aware of at least some of his many aptitudes and talents but this one took me by surprise. He wrote, directed, produced and acted in "The Silent Musical" that was performed this passed weekend at the Philo Grange. I write this review hoping that many more of you will be called to attend repeat stagings of the performance next Friday the 10th and Saturday the 11th at the Philo Grange - 7pm. I truly believe that right here in Anderson Valley we are being presented with a work worthy of national if not global attention. On stage we had: Freudish Denver Tuttle as Doctor Weaver a psycotherapist who himself was infused with not only self-importance but a good dollop of the dark. The Flower Lady Sheila Leighton who, ever-present though in the background through much of the play, represented through her flowers the infinitely larger and more powerful natural world that often is overlooked in our human absorbtion with ourselves. Please excuse this aging Hippie's reference but onstage it is Flower Power that ultimately sets the "ordinary day" run amok back on happy track. Bernadette Rustuccio as Destiny and Seasha Rose (Robb) as Chance are two young women involved in an early stage, exploratory relationship. The dark entity impacts them at first pleasantly and then plays havoc. As in any ordinary town on an ordinary day there is a cop, The Constable played by Angela DeWitt and a Gambler, Keevan Labowitz, both of whom are titillated into risque episodes by the untethered dark entity. In the earlier days of the play's setting there would always be a Newsboy on the street informing people of the latest SCANDAL - Derek Roseboom was he and yes even he got caught up in manipulations manifested by the innocent. That innocence was portrayed by a gender ambiguous young Dolly played by EJ Hanes who was in the dubious care of Doctor Weaver. Yet even in her innocense was he able to reject thoughtless imposition. Whether it was the quality of the written play or magic, the cohesive and masterful performance by all actors was remarkable. The "Silent Ochestra" was brilliant in its own right. Scored by Daniel McDonnell and composed of Janet Booygarn, Lawrence McCarter, Daniel McDonnell, Michael O'Brien & Alice Wolfle-Erskine it was itself a gifted collaboration of talent and empathy with the stagework which, for me, promoted the evening pleasure beyond "musical" into the realm of opera where music and action melted together in one flowing unforgetable experience. Though no one on stage spoke a word the ochestra was pleasantly and fully audible to even my weakened ears. If I missed a note I didn't miss a beat of the cohesion. The enthusiastic standing ovation along with exuberant conversation following the event proved that all attendees share my exhilaration and if you miss it you will regret it. (David Severn)

APPLY NOW! for Mendocino County’s 2018 Master Gardener training leading to certification as a UC Master Gardener Volunteer. Classes begin January 18 at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. Details at cemendocino.ucanr.edu or contact Coordinator Wendy Roberts at 707-937-4702 (wendy@mcn.org).  Space is Limited—Apply Now!

THAT HEAVY RAID by Fish and Wildlife on central Navarro nearly three weeks ago was aimed at this guy, Mathew Holberg. Holberg, who keeps lots of weapons on or about his person was considered armed and dangerous. He appeared in the Anderson Valley two years ago in pursuit of a Navarro-based love interest, lately making his home in MRC-owned forest. The love interest was no longer interested, but Holberg felt at home in the Deepend, what with a steady supply of methamphetamine and a community of persons with similar interests. Fish and Wildlife took him into custody on a variety of charges, including poaching, illegal weapons, trespassing, possession of meth. Holberg is likely going to spend the rainy months in the warm, dry embrace of the County Jail.

RUMORS of the week: Supervisor Hamburg won’t seek another term, and a local landscaper has bought the property in central Boonville that was once the home of Bo and Bobbie Hiatt.

ONE MORE: Inland gadfly John Sakowicz is likely to run for Supervisor, but which seat? I don’t think Sako is a resident of the Fifth District. Here at the bunker, we prefer one or another of two women, but one says absolutely no candidacy for her, the other is “thinking it over.”

OUR GENERAL IMPRESSION is that meth use isn't as prevalent as it was a few years ago, but it's readily available in the Anderson Valley and everywhere else in Mendocino County if you're looking. Oxycontin and Oxy’s cousin, heroin? We hear heroin is plentiful but not in the pill form. Whatever, as the young people say, it’s always time to get support to get away from drugs, and booze too, if booze is getting in the way of your life. And here’s a good place to start…

SUBSTANCE ABUSE SUPPORT GROUP at the Anderson Valley Health Center

This group will serve as a space for participants to address substance use issues and examine core issues that drive substance abuse. The group will utilize a client-centered, collaborative approach and participants will be encouraged to identify individual goals. For example, one participant may have a goal to reduce use of one substance, while another participant may have a goal to maintain a longstanding abstinence from multiple substances. Additionally, the group welcomes those entering into or maintaining a medication assisted treatment (MAT) for substance abuse. In the group format, participants will have the opportunity to experience a sense of community, develop their communication skills, and give and receive feedback from others. Participants will receive support and a safe space to explore their relationship to substances and will be taught skills to assist in reducing and managing substance use while working toward their individual goals. Wednesdays from 5:30 - 6:45 PM, beginning November 29th

The group will be limited in size and we ask all participants to make a commitment to attending the group weekly for a three month module To join the group or for more information, please contact Stephanie Shreve at 707-895-3477 ext. 240 or sshreve@avhc.org

HOMELESS IN ANDERSON VALLEY? At least two persons are sleeping in their cars every night that we know of, but the lack of affordable rentals is occurring throughout California, but here in The Valley it’s exacerbated by so many conversions to Air B&B’s. When the local superintendent of schools can’t find a rental, and when my old totally non-code, iron and sulphur tap water place on Anderson Valley Way is Air B&Beed for $400 a night…

BURN PERMIT SUSPENSION LIFTED. Effective Friday, November 3, 2017 at 12:01 AM the burn permit suspension in Mendocino County will be lifted. Residents wishing to burn MUST verify it is a permissive burn day prior to burning. For more information regarding winter burning regulations go to the MCQAMD website Recorded Burn Day status is available 24/7 on the Burn Information Line at (707) 463-4391.

ATTENTION VETERANS! Steve Sparks writes: “Next Saturday, 11th November, 2017, at 10.30am prompt, the American Legion’s Kirk Wilder and myself will be presenting a special Veterans Day service alongside the Remembrance Wall at the Evergreen Cemetery on Anderson Valley Way just north of Boonville. I have been involved with such an event for much of my adult life, both in the UK and San Francisco, and initiated the local event in the Valley eight years ago, before taking a break for a couple of years ago as others organized the ceremony. A month or so ago, Kirk approached me about working on this again and we have done so together and will hopefully present a meaningful Remembrance Day gathering next weekend. Valley folks like yourselves are encouraged to attend. It should be emphasized that this is not an overtly political or religious event. It is simply an opportunity for the community of Anderson Valley to show its support and gratitude for both the men and women who have given their lives or were wounded in the service of their country, and also those who have served or continue to serve, so that we may have the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy today… We hope to see you there.”

JEFF BLANKFORT WRITES: “I’m sending along this latest from Ray McGovern with a suggestion that you reconsider your long held position that the Warren Commission was right and that Oswald was Kennedy's assassin and acted alone.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/30/the-deep-states-jfk-triumph-over-trump/

I was never a supporter of Kennedy but smelled something wrong with the story from the beginning. Speaking from experience I know that as a defector to the USSR and then, as an all too visible "activist" for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans (of which he appeared to be the only member) and then becoming noticeably agitated when turned down for a visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, there was absolutely no way he would have a job and still be working at the Texas State School Depository on the day of the assassination (or any other day) if he was not working for the federal government as a paid agent. This was at the height of the Cold War and the FBI made sure that people whom it considered to be subversive, and Hoover had 17 million in his files, would have a hard time getting and keeping their jobs and he did that by having FBI agents visit their places of employment and urging their bosses to fire them. Under the circumstances there is no way that Oswald would have a job with a Texas state institution unless someone in the FBI or the CIA wanted him to have it. The book that McGovern praises by James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters, is the very best book on the subject that I have read and recommend you read it as well if the subject still grabs you."

ED REPLY: I'm going to get the book and I'm going to reconsider and report back. The case still fascinates me, as it does millions of people. Of course the "intelligence community" was, at a minimum, fully aware of Oswald, especially at that time ('59-'63), and Oswald was certainly a shooter if not the shooter, and someone was funding him, and and and… Yeah, I'm reconsidering. But there were some unlikely dudes moving around in left circles in those days, including the Americans who fought with Castro in Cuba like William Morgan. Morgan was in Cuba's early command structure but later executed by Guevara as a spy for Yankee imperialism. Interesting guy who inspired an interesting book by Michael Sallah called “The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba’s Freedom." Morgan and Che Guevara were the only foreigners elevated to commandante status.

THE SUPERVISORS are spending $844,000 to beat back the mold and do other repairs at the County Museum in Willits where a new regime is in place. Allison Glassey was compelled to resign as director of the Museum for financial improprieties. Glassey, a long-time administrator for the County, was installed in the Willits job seemingly as her reward for keeping certain County skeletons behind nailed closet doors. The ethically flexible Glassey, who stalled hiring of a qualified curator for the years she presided over the seldom visited collection, will (finally) be replaced by a bona fide curator. We've agitated for a centralized collection of Mendo stuff for years, a tripartite recognition of some kind that linked the Held-Poage, the Grace Hudson, and the County collection at Willits. And throw in the fascinating trove of court cases a-mouldering in the Courthouse basement; the old handwritten accounts of civil and criminal cases from yesteryear is, so far as we know, unexplored.

THESE DAYS, Library Director Karen Horner is nominally in charge of the Museum, but Janelle Rau of the Executive Office is also involved. The Bartleys are off the payroll and out the door and, we hear, not happy about it. Glassey hired the Bartleys but for what purpose is not known. They were given a room in the museum and, as far as anyone knows, they worked only on projects they were interested in. Once Glassey was put on administrative leave it became obvious that she and the Bartleys were running the Museum into the ground financially. Instead of being paid her full salary and benefits to stay home month after month, Glassey quickly resigned. We understand that when she was confronted with evidence of her questionable financial dealings she resigned on the spot.

SLEAZIEST LETTER to the editor ever?

“As I anguish with friends, neighbors and countless others over the wildfire catastrophe that has devastated major urban concentrations, towns and isolated communities throughout northern California, I am tormented by the realization that year in and year out our country’s armed forces inflict this same kind of horrific tragedy, and much worse, on millions of civilians around the globe. Russell H. Bartley, Fort Bragg”

BARTLEY’S LETTER appeared in Sunday's Ukiah Daily Journal under the Journal's title, "Destruction Everywhere." Gee, I hope you've been able to get some sleep, Russ, with all that anguish and torment. But really, taking advantage of local tragedies for a cliched shot at American imperialism? Apples and oranges, dude.

CONGRATULATIONS to Scotty Tuttle (r). Another Round Valley Indian Tribal member, one of four new Corrections Deputies, sworn in by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office this morning. Welcome aboard. (Sheriff’s Lieutenant Shannon Barney)

AV HIGH SCHOOL GOLD HONOR ROLL,

12th Grade: Marlen Ferreyra, Cozette Ellis, JT Carlin, Omar Mendoza, Sydney Sanchez, Maria Figueroa Delgado, Angus Fraser, Carlos Hernandez, Ernesto Macias, Daisy Delgado, Morgan Kobler, Hailee Peterson.

11th Grade: Caleb Devine-Gomes, Joseline Espinoza, Hannah Woolfenden, Gio Mendoza, Leslie Mendoza, Maribel Franco, Jimena Guerrero, Jazmin Espinoza, Braulio Echeverria, Nancy Mendoza, Kevin Alarcron, Katelyn Clow, Citlalli Lievanos, Clarisa Espinoza, Alexis Solano, Pilar Tovar, Vanessa Bucio, Elena Sanchez, Melanie Lagunas, Lizet Gurierrez.

10th Grade: Antonio Estrada, Owen Schock, Oscar Orozco, Neftali Ferreyra, Tsy Quintanilla, Zachary Whitely.

9th Grade: Valeriia Matvieieva, Ximena Flores, Alex Tovar, Jason Angulo, Shekina McEwen, Erik Ocampo, David Parra, Pedro Talavera, Kaitlin Espinoza.

8th Grade: Claire Livingston, Ronan Williams, Cristofer Oseguera, Angeles Flores, Daniel Garibay, Trent Lopez, Danyel Swan, Jesus Bucio, Lidia Sanchez.

7th Grade: Addia Williams, Gibelli Guerrero, Jesse Richert, Anika Ellis, Lisset Ochoa, Willow Douglas-Thomas, Nathan Burger, Emmanuel Mendoza, Asirianna Perez, Jose Franco, Mia Vargas, Emma Bellow, Alejandro Carillo.

FIXER UPPER, YORKVILLE

THANKS TO SHINDIG RAISERS

To the AV Community and beyond:

Anderson Valley Foodshed would like to give big thanks to the participants in the 3rd Annual ShinDig dinner, music, and pie auction in October during C’mon Home To Eat month. Together we raised $2,400 that will be divided equally between the AV School District Fresh (Local) Food in the Schools project and the Good Farm Fund to be distributed to food farms that suffered damage in the fires. Specifically we would like to thank donors: Rachel for poster printing; Paysanne for ice cream, Pennyroyal for cheese; Johnny, Marcus, and Melinda; for space; musicians Charlie, Juan, Carlos, Noaa, and Jeremy; Jeanne Eliades for apples; Ranch Kai Pomo for tomatillos; and Filigreen Farm, Yorkville Olive Ranch, and Bramble Farms for olive oil. And thanks to our volunteers and food and site prep; Lama, Jay, Rob, Tim, Abeja, Andy, Jen, Deanna, Lily, Linda, Barbara, Amanda, and Maria Elena for preparing the excellent cabbage salsa. All the local pies were delicious and creative and their donor-makers and winning bidders much appreciated. Keevan and Carolyn were fantastic auctioneers. And many thanks to all the farms/ranches that grew the farm-to-table ingredients for the dinner: Anderson Valley Community Farm, Brock Farm, Blue Meadow, Mendocino Meats, and Petit Teton.

Barbara Goodell

Boonville

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “These people are total enablers. Skrag shows up half-starved, but now look at him, so fat he can hardly walk. And they make him so comfortable it's disgusting. Look at the bed they bought for him. And he doesn’t even use it. Me, I work non-stop and maybe once a week someone says, ‘Nice doggie’."

CARE-A-VAN COMING TO MANCHESTER 11/20 & 11/21 &FORT BRAGG 12/13

Care-a-Van, Mendocino County’s low cost mobile Spay/Neuter & Vaccine Clinic:

Care-a-Van - Manchester 11/20 & 11/21 10:am - 2:pm@ Garcia Guild Hall, 43970 Crispin Road

Care-a-Van - Fort Bragg 12/13 10:am-2:pm@ Fort Bragg Feed & Pet, 880 Stewart Street

Vaccinations $10-$13 (no appointment necessary)

Also available: Heartworm testing Microchips

Appointments needed for spay/neuter (707) 888-7698

Please call for appointment ASAP. Spay/Neuter appointments fill quickly.

Thanks so much for caring for you pets!

DEREGULATION, PG&E, AND THE FIRES

by Jim Shields

PG&E is now under investigation by state authorities trying to determine whether the electrical monopoly’s power lines played a role in igniting Northcoast wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 43 people. Both the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFIRE) and the state’s Public Utilities Commission have launched investigations.

Meanwhile, a group of state lawmakers have announced that they will introduce legislation in January to prevent electric utilities found culpable in wildfires from passing the costs for claims not covered by insurance as well as fines or penalties onto customers.

“This practice is an outrage,” said Senator Jerry Hill, who represents San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. “Victims of devastating fires and other customers should not be forced to pay for the mistakes made by utilities. It’s time to stop allowing utilities to push the burden of their negligence onto the backs of customers.”

One of the state senators on board with Hill is Mike McGuire, who Northcoast district includes communities ravaged by the wildfires last month.

The proposed law is triggered by public outrage generated by the state’s “Big Three” utilities’ ongoing efforts to recover costs in wildfires not covered by insurance by passing them along to ratepayers.

For example, San Diego Gas and Electric Company wants to recover $379 million in costs from the 2007 Witch, Guejito and Rice fires. The utility’s powerlines and overhead equipment were blamed for the three fires that caused two deaths, burned 200,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes.

Two administrative law judges rejected the San Diego utility’s bid to recover costs in August, but their proposed decision is subject to the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission. SDG&E wants the commission to reject the decision, so do utility giants Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison Company, according to papers filed in the case. PG&E said in a document it filed that the proposed decision puts utilities in “an untenable situation.”

Separately, PG&E is laying the groundwork for an application to recover costs in the 2015 Butte fire, which was caused by PG&E powerlines and killed two people, burned more than 70,000 acres and destroyed 921 structures. The first step is to obtain permission from the CPUC to track costs associated with the fire. PG&E’s application to do so is pending with the CPUC. PG&E told the Securities and Exchange Commission in July that if the application is approved and if claims exceed its liability coverage, it expects to seek CPUC authorization “to recover any excess amounts from customers.”

The cause of the North Bay wildfires is still under investigation. In a document alerting the SEC to the fires, PG&E said: “It currently is unknown whether the Utility would have any liability associated with these fires. The Utility has approximately $800 million in liability insurance for potential losses that may result from these fires.”

Senator Hill said the bill that will be introduced January 3 when the Legislature reconvenes will also prevent electric companies from passing the costs of fines and penalties leveled against them for causing wildfires along to customers.

Gas companies are already prevented from shifting the burden of fines and penalties onto customers as a result of legislation he introduced after the San Bruno disaster that was caused by the rupture of a PG&E gas pipeline in 2010. The legislation, Assembly Bill 56, was approved by the governor in 2011.

According to a Bay Area News Group report,

For the better part of a decade, California’s utilities have helped to stall the state’s effort to map where their power lines present the highest risk for wildfires, an initiative that critics say could have forced PG&E to strengthen power poles and bolster maintenance efforts before this month’s deadly North Bay fires.

Sen. Hill and other critics have characterized the years-long state regulatory efforts as a long, meandering slog, with hundreds of utilities, telecommunication companies, internet providers and other stakeholders fighting over proposed regulations that could add significant costs to their bottom line.

State officials began working to tighten regulations on utilities and create the detailed maps after wind-toppled electrical lines in 2007 ignited catastrophic fires in the San Diego area. But nearly 10 years later, the state Public Utilities Commission — which initiated the process — still hasn’t finished the maps, let alone adopted strict new regulations.

A review of the mapping project by the Bay Area News Group shows that utilities have repeatedly asked to slow down the effort and argued as recently as July that, as PG&E put it, certain proposed regulations would “add unnecessary costs to construction and maintenance projects in rural areas.”

On Oct. 6, two days before the start of the deadliest outbreak of wildfires in California history, two administrative law judges assigned to oversee the project granted yet another delay at the request of PG&E and other utilities.

The timing of that 74-day deadline extension and the decade of seemingly endless debate about the maps has outraged lawmakers who have been pushing regulators for years to speed up a project designed to prevent catastrophic fires like the ones in Wine Country that killed at least 42 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes and businesses.

The Big Three electrical monopolies are able to operate with a public-be-damned attitude is because of this state’s fatal blunder deregulating the electrical industry back in 1996.

It’s a history I’ve written and spoken about for years, but here’s a quick summary of what occurred.

The real culprits are the politicians who brought us deregulation back in 1996. The entire state legislature (Republicans and Democrats) voted unanimously to unleash economic havoc on an unsuspecting public. Those elected leaders, colossal imbeciles each and every one, are responsible for the deregulation fiasco that led to an unprecedented period of large-scale blackouts, rolling brownouts, electrical market manipulation and illegal shutdowns of pipelines by the Texas energy consortium Enron, and, of course, price gouging,

Here in Mendocino County back in 1996 most local governments, including the then-Board of Supervisors, were lobbied by PG&E to support electrical deregulation. The BOS was paid a visit by a PG&E exec who was the monopoly’s point man on the Northcoast. He was also the husband of Supervisor Patti Campbell, of Fort Bragg.

The Big Three, along with their facilitators in Sacramento, sold the public a bill of goods knowing that every experiment deregulating once-regulated industries has been a disaster. Let me count the ways: Airlines, railroads, savings and loans, telecommunications, banks, Wall Street, and the list goes on.

Truly great leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, a grand old Republican, figured out a century ago that certain sectors of our economy must be monitored and regulated because the typical forces of the free market could not control the resulting anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior inherent to such economic endeavors. Teddy used his big stick to bust the trusts, which is what folks called monopolies back then. He also brought the monopolies under their first public control.

While Teddy was bringing the monopolists to heel back East, Californians in the early 1900s were rounding up Southern Pacific Railroad and the gas and electric utilities which owned state and local government lock-stock-and-barrel. An aroused citizenry brought the railroad and utility giants to their knees, primarily through the creation of public commissions with broad regulatory authority over those industries.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, for almost a hundred years, California’s utilities policy was pretty straight-forward. In return for allowing the Big Three to continue to do business as legal monopolies, their rates and services would be subject to control through the Public Utilities Commission. That was the basic trade-off. Theoretically, and most of the time in practice, the PUC set rates charged to the public on a standard of cost-based pricing. Whatever it cost the utilities to actually produce energy was factored into the basic rate, plus a reasonable margin for profit.

A century ago, our political leaders understood that the electric and gas industries were the types of economic endeavors that just didn’t work in the free marketplace. Besides, given the evolving public investment in critical utility infrastructure, such as dams and related activities for hydroelectric power, it was good public policy to maintain these kinds of private-public partnerships growing out of a regulated environment.

The system was not perfect, but it sure beats the hell out of what we have now.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, and is also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 6, 2017

DANYELLA BUNA, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

MICHAEL DONAHE, Ukiah. Disoderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Transaction of firearm without dealer’s license by criminal gang member.

JOSHUA GUEVARA, Ukiah. Resisting, failure to appear, probation revocation.

DAVID NORRIS, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.

JOHN RIVERA-AGUILAR, Hillard, Ohio. DUI-alcohol-drugs.

ROBERT SCHEER INTERVIEWS DANIEL ELSBERG

Daniel Ellsberg worked at the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation during the Vietnam War before deciding to release documents (The Pentagon Papers) in 1971 that showed the US government knew the war was basically unwinnable and lied to the public about it. Charges under the Espionage Act against Ellsberg were eventually dismissed. His forthcoming book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, is a first person account of the United States' nuclear program in the 1960s. After initially supporting the Vietnam War, Ellsberg eventually came to see the deaths from the war as unjustified homicide. He says that had it not been for draft resisters and other whistleblowers, he would not have leaked the Pentagon Papers. And he tells Scheer about what kept Richard Nixon from using nuclear weapons in Vietnam.

Podcast of interview:

https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/daniel-ellsberg-the-doomsday-machine

SAN ANSELMO is in a major tiz about these Halloween exhibits downtown.

They're the work of a developmentally disabled workshop:

Here’s the entire thread of local commentary.

ScarecrowComments

IN CHICAGO, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in US black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.

(Adolph Reed, 1996)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Kevin Spacey is gay, always has been. He got drunk and propositioned a teenage actor. Teenage actor is now a 40 something. Kevin claims he doesn’t recall the incident. He apologizes to said actor. And admits the reason he was attracted to said actor in first place is that he is gay. Not sure why his admission he is gay, which is no big surprise, is so insulting to gay community. It’s not like gay men aren’t above such behavior as any other man. Or woman for that matter. He should be given credit for owning up to it regardless that he doesn’t remember a specific night. I believe him when he says he doesn’t remember. And the anti-gay peeps are always gonna point to any gay man and say he’s a pedophile. That’s their sorry lot. Whoever you are, if you screwed up, own it and make amends. Final summation: Kevin Spacey still has my vote for president.

SYMPHONY OF THE REDWOODS WILL PRESENT AN ALMOST-POPS SEASON OPENING CONCERT

November 3, 2017 – International award winner and consummate modern concert pianist, Vivian Choi, will grace the Symphony of the Redwoods stage to launch their 2017-2018 performance season with a spectacular concert. The program begins with the haunting and familiar Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt, followed by the Lieutenant Kijé Suite by Prokofiev, a comedic piece about an accidental and imaginary soldier awarded the highest of honors, then "killed off" when the czar decides to meet him. The closing piece is George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, when the orchestra will be joined by Choi. Music Director Allan Pollack will lead the Symphony on Saturday, November 11, at 7:30pm and Sunday, November 12, at 2pm at Cotton Auditorium in Fort Bragg.

Choi was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in Sydney, Australia, where she began receiving formal musical training. At age 13, she won second place in her first international piano competition, and since then has studied and performed music across the globe. Choi will give her contemporary take on Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, which debuted in 1925, one year after Rhapsody in Blue. The composition adheres to traditional concerto form, but still carries Gershwin's signature jazz-inspired style.

All Symphony of the Redwoods concerts will be at Cotton Auditorium, 500 N. Harold Street, Fort Bragg. Tickets are available for $20 at Harvest Market and the Redwood Coast Senior Center in Fort Bragg, Out of This World in Mendocino, and at the door. Educators and education staff tickets are $10 and attendees 18 and under are always free. For more information, please contact our executive director, Alex Pierangeli, at 707-946-0898 or symphony@mcn.org. Read more about our featured soloist, Vivian Choi, at vivian-choi.com.

Symphony of the Redwoods 2017-2018 Season

www.symphonyoftheredwoods.orghttp://www.symphonyoftheredwoods.org/

Season Sponsor: North Coast Brewing Co.

Contact Information:

Alex Pierangeli, Executive Director

707.964.0898

symphony@mcn.org

All performances at Cotton Auditorium - 500 N. Harold St, Fort Bragg, CA 95437

Tickets are $20, guests age 18 and under free

Available at Harvest Market and the Redwood Coast Senior Center in Fort Bragg,

Out of This World in Mendocino, at the door, and online at http://www.symphonyoftheredwoods.org/tickets.php

Fall Concert

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017, 7:30pm

Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, 2pm

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

Prokofiev: Lt. Kije Suite

Gershwin: Piano Concerto, featuring Vivian Choi, piano

Winter Concert

Saturday, February 3, 2018, 7:30pm

Sunday, February 4, 2018, 2pm

Dvorak: Slavonic Dance No. 1 in C minor

Brahms: Double Concerto, featuring Jay Zhong, violin; Stephen Harrison, cello

Schumann: Symphony No. 2

Spring Concert

Saturday, April 28, 2018, 7:30 pm

Sunday, April 29, 2018, 2pm

Beethoven: Symphony No. 2

Bruch: Scottish Fantasy

Featuring Annelle K. Gregory, violin

ANCHORS AWEIGH

Editor,

As residents of wildfire-prone San Diego, we feel terrible for the thousands of Santa Rosans, Napans, Mendocinoans and others who have lost their homes. Given the sheer number of houses to rebuild as soon as possible, I have two words — shipping containers.

Millions of these fireproof, sea-tested, steel containers are sitting on docks up and down California’s coast, waiting for a new home. They connect and stack like Lego bricks. Spaces for windows, doors, wall passages and skylights can be cut out. They’re inexpensive — around $4,000 each for 400 square feet — and can become a house of any size. And on HGTV, they’ve shown how quickly containers can be plumbed, wired, insulated and dry-walled to look like any conventional house on the inside (and outside, if you want), producing a finished home in 8-12 weeks.

Santa Rosa residents already have foundations and hookups. All you need is an expedient way to rebuild, and shipping containers would provide the perfect solution. Plus, you’re helping the environment by recycling these as shelters. For my next house, I plan to find land where I can build a shipping container house for all its practicality, eco-friendliness, cost-effectiveness, inflammability and innovativeness … a perfect writer’s retreat.

Beth Wagner Brust

La Jolla

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Twenty years is a long time. 25 years ago, it was the ‘End of History’, and the dot-com bubble was just starting to get going. The Internet and all associated stuff was a fraction of what it is now.

9/11 hadn’t happened; that changed how we fly, we bank, and how we travel. If someone lets loose a nuke someplace, a place like New York or Detroit will be essentially uninhabitable.

In twenty years, there’s a good chance we won’t have ice in the arctic, and that won’t be trivial. Access to fresh water isn’t trivial. Losses to the Ogallala aquifer between 2001 and 2011 equated to a third of its cumulative depletion during the entire 20th century. When that goes, that’s going to cause problems.

The book The Water Knife has a pretty good take on how things might go.

Who has made the best predictions 20 years from 1937? From 1957? From 1977? Or in any 20 year timeframe?

Cheap oil has given us a good deal of ever increasing progress, population, and technological complexity. Predictions 20 years from now are a tricky business. At best, one has to prepare for a variety of crazy-to-us-now futures.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

by James Kunstler

Everybody and his uncle, and his uncle’s mother’s uncle, believes that the stock markets will be zooming to new record highs this week, and probably so, because it is the time of year to fatten up, just as the Thanksgiving turkeys are happily fattening up — prior to their mass slaughter.

President Trump’s new Federal Reserve chair, Jerome “Jay” Powell, “a low interest-rate kind of guy,” was obviously picked because he is Janet Yellen minus testicles, the grayest of gray go-along Fed go-fers, going about his life-long errand-boy duties in the thickets of financial lawyerdom like a bustling little rodent girdling the trunks of every living shrub on behalf of the asset-stripping business that is private equity (eight years with the Deep State-ish Carlyle Group) while subsisting on the rich insect life in the leaf litter below his busy little paws.

Powell’s contribution to the discourse of finance was his famous utterance that the lack of inflation is “kind of a mystery.” Oh, yes, indeed, a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a mystery dropped in a doggie bag with half a pastrami sandwich. Unless you consider that all the “money” pumped out of the Fed and the world’s other central banks flows through a hose to only two destinations: the bond and stock markets, where this hot-air-like “money” inflates zeppelin-sized bubbles that have no relation to on-the-ground economies where real people have to make things and trade things.

Powell might have gone a bit further and declared contemporary finance itself “a mystery,” because it has been engineered deliberately so by the equivalent of stage magicians devising ever more astounding ruses, deceptions, and mis-directions as they enjoy sure-thing revenue streams their magic tricks generate. This is vulgarly known as “the rich getting richer.” The catch is, they’re getting richer on revenue streams of pure air, and there is a lot of perilous distance between the air they’re suspended in and the hard ground below.

Powell noted that the economy is growing robustly and unemployment is supernaturally low. Like his colleagues and auditors in the investment banking community, he’s just making this shit up. As the late Joseph Goebbels used to say describing his misinformation technique, if you’re going to lie, make sure it’s a whopper.

The economy isn’t growing and can’t grow. The economy is a revenant of something that used to exist, an industrial economy that has rolled over and died and come back as a moldy ghoul feeding on the ghostly memories of itself. Stocks go up because the unprecedented low interest rates established by the Fed allow company CEOs to “lever-up” issuing bonds (i.e. borrow “money” from, cough cough, “investors”) and then use the borrowed “money” to buy back their own stock to raise the share value, so they can justify their companies’ boards-of-directors jacking up their salaries and bonuses — based on the ghost of the idea that higher stock prices represent the creation of more actual things of value (front-end-loaders, pepperoni sticks, oil drilling rigs).

The economy is actually contracting because we can’t afford the energy it takes to run the things we do — mostly just driving around — and unemployment is not historically low, it’s simply mis-represented by not including the tens of millions of people who have dropped out of the work force. And an epic wickedness combined with cowardice drives the old legacy news business to look the other way and concoct its good times “narrative.” If any of the reporters at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal really understand the legerdemain at work in these “mysteries” of finance, they’re afraid to say. The companies they work for are dying, like so many other enterprises in the non-financial realm of the used-to-be economy, and they don’t want to be out of paycheck until the lights finally go out.

The “narrative” is firmest before it its falseness is proved by the turn of events, and there are an awful lot of events out there waiting to present, like debutantes dressing for a winter ball. The debt ceiling… North Korea… Mueller… Hillarygate….the state pension funds….That so many agree the USA has entered a permanent plateau of exquisite prosperity is a sure sign of its imminent implosion. What could go wrong?

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler)

HOMELESS EXPLOSION

by Gillian Flaccus & Geoff Mulvhill

Seattle (AP) — Housing prices are soaring here thanks to the tech industry, but the boom comes with a consequence: A surge in homelessness marked by 400 unauthorized tent camps in parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks. The liberal city is trying to figure out what to do.

"I've got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I've got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can't afford housing," said Seattle City Councilman Mike O'Brien. "There's nowhere for these folks to move to."

That struggle is not Seattle's alone. A homeless crisis is rocking the entire West Coast, pushing abject poverty into the open like never before.

Public health is at risk, several cities have declared states of emergency, and cities and counties are spending millions — in some cases billions — in a search for solutions.

San Diego now scrubs its sidewalks with bleach to counter a deadly hepatitis A outbreak. In Anaheim, 400 people sleep along a bike path in the shadow of Angel Stadium. Organizers in Portland lit incense at an outdoor food festival to cover up the stench of urine in a parking lot where vendors set up shop.

Homelessness is not new on the West Coast. But interviews with local officials and those who serve the homeless in California, Oregon and Washington — coupled with an Associated Press review of preliminary homeless data — confirm it's getting worse.

People who were once able to get by, even if they suffered a setback, are now pushed to the streets because housing has become so expensive. All it takes is a prolonged illness, a lost job, a broken limb, a family crisis. What was once a blip in fortunes now seems a life sentence.

Among the findings:

—Official counts taken earlier this year in California, Oregon and Washington show 168,000 homeless people in the three states, according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 19,000 more than were counted in 2015, although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods.

—During the same period, the number of unsheltered people in the three states climbed 18 percent to 105,000.

—Rising rents are the main culprit. The median one-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area, for instance.

—Since 2015, at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington have declared emergencies due to the rise of homelessness, a designation usually reserved for natural disasters.

The West Coast's newly homeless are people who were able to survive on the margins — until those margins moved.

For years, Stanley Timmings, 62, and his 61-year-old girlfriend, Linda Catlin, were able to rent a room in a friend's house on their combined disability payments.

Last spring, that friend died of colon cancer and the couple was thrust on Seattle's streets.

Timmings used their last savings to buy a used RV for $300 and spent another $300 to register it. Now, the couple parks the RV near a small regional airport.

They have no running water and no propane for the cook stove. They go to the bathroom in a bucket and dump it behind a nearby business.

After four months, the stench of human waste inside the RV is overwhelming. They are exhausted, scared and defeated, with no solution in sight.

"Between the two of us a month, we get $1,440 in disability," he said. "We can't find a place for that."

Nationally, homelessness has been trending down, partly because governments and nonprofit groups have gotten better at moving people into housing. That's true in many West Coast cities, too, but the flow the other direction is even faster.

"So everybody who was just hanging on because they had cheap rent, they're losing that ... and they wind up outside," said Margaret King, director of housing programs for the nonprofit DESC in Seattle. "It's just exploded."

Above all, the West Coast lacks long-term, low-income housing for people like Ashley Dibble and her 3-year-old daughter.

Dibble, 29, says she has been homeless off and on for about a year, after her ex-boyfriend squandered money on his car and didn't pay the rent for three months. She sent her toddler to live with the girl's paternal grandparents in Florida. She and her new boyfriend were sleeping under tarps near Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, when an outreach team referred them to a new shelter.

With an eviction on her record and little income, no one will rent to her.

"I've had so many doors slammed in my face, it's ridiculous," Dibble said, wiping away tears.

All along the West Coast, local governments are scrambling for answers — and taxpayers are footing the bill.

Voters have approved more than $8 billion in spending since 2015 on affordable housing and other anti-homelessness programs, mostly as tax increases. Los Angeles voters, for example, approved $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of affordable housing to address a homeless population that's reached 34,000 people within city limits.

Jeremy Lemoine, an outreach case manager with REACH in Seattle, called it the situation a refugee crisis.

"I don't mean to sound hopeless," he said. "I generate hope for a living for people — that there is a future for them — but we need to address it now."

(Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Amy Taxin in Anaheim, Julie Watson in San Diego and Chris Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

MENDOCINO COUNTY COMMUNITY WORKSHOP: “ALL ABOUT INSURANCE”

On November 8, 2017 the County of Mendocino, First District Supervisor Carrie Brown and the California Department of Insurance will be hosting an insurance workshop to answer frequently asked questions and assist fire victims with navigating their homeowners’ insurance policies. The meeting will be held at the Eagle Peak Middle School Cafeteria located at 8601 West Road in Redwood Valley.

The meeting will have subject matter experts from the California Department of Insurance and various State and Local insurance brokers, agents and adjusters. Attendees are encouraged to bring copies of their policies for one-on-one assistance following the presentation. Insurance related questions that were not answered at the Debris Removal Workshop on November 1, 2017, will be included in the questions and answers portion of the workshop.

When: Wednesday, November 8, 2017 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Where: Eagle Peak Middle School Cafeteria, 8601 West Rd, Redwood Valley CA 95470

Who: 

• Mendocino County Fire Recovery Team
• California Department of Insurance
• United Policyholders
• CalOES
• FEMA
• CalFire
• Local and State Insurance Brokers, Adjusters and Agents
• State Farm of Ukiah
• Nationwide of Ukiah
• Mendocino County Planning and Building
• Mendocino County Environmental Health

Live Online: This media briefing will be streamed live on the Mendocino County Facebook page and YouTube Channel.

Residents may submit questions in advance at ceo@mendocinocounty.org. For more information please contact the Executive Office at (707) 463-4441.

BEWARE OF NETFLIX SCAM

A recent Netflix email scam has been targeting subscribers of the popular streaming service telling them that their account is about to be canceled. The well-designed, individualized fake email convinces customers to update their account information to avoid suspension. This results in stolen personal and credit card information.

The email has the subject line “Your suspension notification” and includes a link where the subscriber is taken to a fake Netflix page which requires their log-in information as well as credit card number, according to the tech Mailguard, which took a screenshot of the scam email.

The scam was detected earlier today and it targeted nearly 110 million Netflix subscribers. As mentioned, the fake site includes Netflix’s logo as well as popular Netflix shows like The Crown and House of Cards to make it seem legitimate. People with accounts should remain vigilant for these bogus suspension emails to avoid getting their personal information compromised.

Information found here:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/netflix-email-scam-targets-millions-of-subscribers/ar-AAuu3hn?li=BBnbfcL

IT CAN HAPPEN HERE

San Ysidro School District Has Spent $480K Trying to Recover $291K From Ex-Superintendent

Ex San Ysidro superintendent Manuel Paul received $211,000 in severance pay when he resigned in 2013, after being indicted in a corruption case, as well as $80,000 in leave pay. If all goes well for the district, Paul will pay that back, plus damages and attorney fees. But he still gets his $174k per year pension.

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/san-ysidro-school-district-has-spent-480k-trying-to-recover-291k-from-ex-superintendent/

TRUMP'S GOVERNMENT OF ONE

In late June, President Trump hosted a group of Native American tribal leaders at the White House and urged them to "just do it" and extract whatever they want from the land they control. The exchange turned out to be an unusually vivid window into the almost kingly power that Trump sees himself as holding, and which he has begun describing with increasing bluntness. The scene was recounted by a source in the room and confirmed by another. The White House didn't dispute the story.

The chiefs explained to Trump that there were regulatory barriers preventing them from getting at their energy. Trump replied: "But now it's me. The government's different now. Obama's gone; and we're doing things differently here. So what I'm saying is, just do it." There was a pause in the room and the tribal leaders looked at each other.

"Chief, chief," Trump continued, addressing one of the tribal leaders, "what are they going to do? Once you get it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean, once it's out of the ground it can't go back in there. You've just got to do it. I'm telling you, chief, you've just got to do it." The tribal leader looked back at one of the White House officials in the room — perhaps somebody from the White House Counsel's office — and he said "can we just do that?" The official equivocated, saying the administration is making progress and has a plan to roll back various regulations. Trump interjected again: "Guys, I feel like you're not hearing me right now. We've just got to do it. I feel like we've got no choice; other countries are just doing it. China is not asking questions about all of this stuff. They're just doing it. And guys, we've just got to do it."

A second source in the room objects vehemently to the suggestion that Trump was asking the chiefs to just start drilling and break federal law. The source said it was unremarkable "Trump speak" and what he meant by "just do it" was he was pushing for removing burdensome regulations from the Obama era.

The same source added the context that, at the time, Trump was getting briefed on all manner of regulations impeding his top priorities including energy production and infrastructure development.

This might seem like an extraordinary account for a U.S. president. But it's increasingly the norm: Trump considers himself above the traditions, limits and laws of the presidency — even when he's not, as in this case — and this trend is intensifying the longer he's in office.

This past week he claimed sole credit for soaring stock prices.

This past week he publicly moaned about limits on his ability to direct the FBI /Justice Department — and then went on to bully the department for not investigating "Crooked Hillary & the Dems."

This past week he told Fox's Laura Ingraham "I'm the only one that matters" when it comes to State Department policy and personnel.

This impatient and improvisational billionaire — who spent a lifetime cutting deals, grabbing what he wanted, and steamrolling anybody in his path as the boss of his own company — has no interest in adapting to the ways of Washington. It wasn't just campaign rhetoric; Trump still really believes, even after the humiliating failure to repeal Obamacare, that he can bend this city to his will.

His clashes with Congress will likely worsen in the months ahead, as some of the most challenging legislative items wend their way through the dysfunctional Capitol.

He'll take every opportunity to rail against institutionalists like Mitch McConnell and he'll try to blow up laws, norms, and rules GOP leaders consider sacred — like the legislative filibuster. Expect to see Trump issue more executive orders as his frustrations boil over; and expect more intense shocks to parts of the governmental system you've never had to think about.

(Axios)

KMEC's "HEROES AND PATRIOTS", a weekly public affairs show at the Mendocino Environmental Center, proudly brings their show to Humboldt County's KMUD on Monday, November 6, at 7 pm, with guests, leading Libertarian, former Congressman, Ron Paul, and Noble Peace Laureate, Ira Helfand, MD in a one-hour show. We're also hoping that our Congressman, Jared Huffman, will briefly call into the show, if he is available.

Support People-Powered Radio, KMUD. In Mendocino County, listen to the webstream and pledge at www.kmud.org.

YES WE HAVE PLANNING — LOTS OF IT

Planning Commission meeting Agenda for November 16, 2017, is posted on the department website at: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions

Victoria Davis
Commission Services Supervisor
707-234-6664

CROW PREPARES FOR WINTER

ON CHAOS

by Manuel Vicent

Translated by Louis S. Bedrock

During the five years that the Spanish Second Republic lasted, according to some historians, Gil Robles, leader of the Right, and Indalecio Prieto, the head of the socialists, never shook hands nor even greeted one another in the halls of Congress.

No one knows what would have happened if these two embattled politicians from groups with irreconcilable differences had decided to sit down together one day, have a cup of coffee together, and talk for a while. According to chaos theory, an action as subtle as the flight of a butterfly can unleash a catastrophe anywhere on the planet; but an irrelevant action is also capable of saving a nation from disaster. Some analysts believe that if those two leaders had had that cup of coffee together, Spain could have avoided its Civil War.

Hitler wanted to be a painter. If the obscure professor of drawing at the Academy of the Fine Arts in Vienna, who gave him a failing grade on the admission exam, had instead given him an “A”, Hitler might have become a happy dauber and humanity might have been spared World War II.

The flight of the butterfly that expresses the theory of chaos is now hovering over the frustration and social crisis in Catalonia. The independence delirium has led the regional leaders to prison. The law has been carried out inexorably.

Street demonstrations, which are the product of the wounded feelings of millions of Catalonians, and the surfacing of national spirit and a reactive Spainophilia on the extreme right, may wind up dissolving into a drab everyday routine. However, some unpredictable anodyne action, one incendiary voice that shatters the unstable equilibrium, will suffice to cause a small rock to shake loose from the mountainside and provoke an avalanche that carries everything in its wake to the bottom of the mountain.

CRAIG SAYS NO TO POSTMODERNISM

Society of the Anti-Spectacle

I am sitting here at a public computer at the Berkeley, CA library, typing up a message to be shared with all, and published. Postmodernism is fucked! I've got, as so many others do, a lot of unscheduled time, some money to spend, good health, and a fully enlightened spiritualized consciousness. I am NOT "rotting in the quagmire of samsara". 50 years of front line radical environmental and peace & justice direct action, decades of selfless service work to benefit the masses, and today I am asking you: "where are we collectively headed?" The pointlessness of the Trumpocalypse politically reigns supreme, the planet earth's climate continues to get warmer with all of the resultant catastrophic weather consequences, and the social fabric is generally not holding up very well. I just read in the news of another mass random shooting inside of a church. Now that's real madness, isn't it? What we must constantly be on guard against, is "accepting the situation", because that is what the insanity of postmodernism is all about. It is all about getting everybody to be so dead spiritually, that the current situation is not responded to. Postmodernism wants everyone to not do anything at all. Postmodernism wants you to stay stoned, keep drinking, and not take any significant action in response to global socio-political circumstances. If you have realized how bad this is, go ahead and contact me at CraigStehr@inbox.com. I just might join with you to take down the spectacle. What say you?

Craig Louis Stehr, San Francisco

FORREST GUMP GOES TO HEAVEN

The day finally arrived. Forrest Gump dies and goes to Heaven. He is at the Pearly Gates, met by St. Peter himself. However, the gates are closed, and Forrest approaches the gatekeeper.

St. Peter said, 'Well, Forrest, it is certainly good to see you. We have heard a lot about you. I must tell you, though, that the place is filling up fast, and we have been administering an entrance examination for everyone. The test is short, but you have to pass it before you can get into Heaven.'

Forrest responds, 'It sure is good to be here, St. Peter, sir. But nobody ever told me about any entrance exam. I sure hope that the test ain't too hard. Life was a big enough test as it was.'

St. Peter continued, 'Yes, I know, Forrest, but the test is only three questions.

First: What two days of the week begin with the letter T?

Second: How many seconds are there in a year?

Third: What is God's first name?'

Forrest leaves to think the questions over. He returns the next day and sees St. Peter, who waves him up, and says, 'Now that you have had a chance to think the questions over, tell me your answers.'

Forrest replied, 'Well, the first one -- which two days in the week begins with the letter 'T'? Shucks, that one is easy.... That would be Today and Tomorrow.'

The Saint's eyes opened wide and he exclaimed, 'Forrest, that is not what I was thinking, but you do have a point, and I guess I did not specify, so I will give you credit for that answer..

How about the next one?' asked St. Peter. 'How many seconds in a year?

Now that one is harder,' replied Forrest, 'but I thunk and thunkabout that, and I guess the only answer can be twelve.'

Astounded, St. Peter said, 'Twelve? Twelve? Forrest, how in Heaven's name could you come up with twelve seconds in a year?'

Forrest replied, 'Shucks, there's got to be twelve: January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd... '

'Hold it,' interrupts St. Peter. 'I see where you are going with this, and I see your point, though that was not quite what I had in mind....but I will have to give you credit for that one, too. Let us go on with the third and final question.

Can you tell me God's first name'?

'Sure,' Forrest replied, 'it's Andy.'

'Andy?' exclaimed an exasperated and frustrated St. Peter. 'Ok, I can understand how you came up with your answers to my first two questions, but just how in the world did you come up with the name Andy as the first name of God?'

'Shucks, that was the easiest one of all,' Forrest replied. 'I learnt it from the song,

ANDY WALKS WITH ME,

ANDY TALKS WITH ME,

ANDY TELLS ME I AM HIS OWN.'

St. Peter opened the Pearly Gates, and said:

'Run, Forrest, Run.'